The New Real

An epic, panoramic play about how the political fault-line has been redrawn. Premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Headlong in 2024.

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It's the 2000s. We're in a faraway country. Rachel, a stellar American political strategist, and Caro, her British data expert, have been hired to fight a ferocious election, in a place where it's hard to tell what's real and what's fake.



They think they're here to teach the Eastern Europeans how to do democracy, but it turns out they're here to learn. And when Rachel's former political partner turns up on the rival side, their showdown threatens to change global politics, from Warsaw to Wisconsin. Forever.



The New Real is David Edgar's epic, panoramic play about how the political fault-line was redrawn. It is an origin story, for right now. It was first performed in 2024 by the Royal Shakespeare Company in association with Headlong at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Holly Race Roughan.



'Edgar's writing has a vigour, a swagger, a taut, tense texture that portrays men and women in the white heat of ambition, duplicity, conscience and tortured idealism' Sunday Times



'There is no more incisive commentator on politics currently working in British theatre' The Times